Blowers Forced Poisonous Alkali Back In, Dragon-Sealing Stones Sealed the Silver Mountain Shut
"Don't panic! Retreat to higher ground!"
Lin Qingdai drew her sword and rode her horse to suppress the enemy in front of the battle lines.
Just as everyone was retreating, a hoarse, whistling laugh suddenly burst out from the wooden cage in front.
"Haha... cough cough cough! Hahahaha!"
Takaichi Nanako gripped the bars of the wooden cage filled with salted fish with both hands, squeezing her face, covered in fish scales and mud, into the gaps between the wooden slats.
The ghastly white smoke, rolling along the ground, had already engulfed the carriage wheels. She took two inhalations, choking and her face was streaked with snot and tears, blood frothing from the corners of her mouth.
But those eyes were terrifyingly bright, and they roared at Gu Moran on the earthen slope:
Gu Moran! You didn't expect this, did you!
Shōni Sukemoto doesn't care about my life or death at all!
He activated the Eight-Branched Mercury Great Formation!
"This is cinnabar and mercury poison accumulated from refining silver; ordinary mountain winds cannot disperse it at all!"
Haha... cough cough!
You can't escape. If you inhale for just fifteen minutes, your lungs will rot into blood within half an hour!
The entire Iwami Silver Mine will be your burial ground Gu Moran! I want to see all of you Great Yan people buried with me!
Hearing this from the other end of the cage, Zhou Yanru was so frightened that his crotch became wet again.
The mercury fumes were the most concentrated, accumulating entirely at the bottom of the cage.
Zhou Yanru disregarded any semblance of dignity as a vice minister, crawling on all fours and desperately trying to burrow under Eunuch Shuangxi's body. He grabbed Shuangxi's thighs with both hands, attempting to use the eunuch's stomach to block the poisonous gas rushing into his nose.
"Father-in-law, save me! Father-in-law, please shield me from this!"
With Eunuch Shuangxi Tuoba Mang's smelly handkerchief still stuffed in his mouth, Shuangxi was pushed back by Zhou Yanru, causing his eyes to roll back and his legs to kick wildly. He kicked Zhou Yanru in the nose, and the two of them rolled around in the narrow wooden cage.
The toxic smoke grew thicker and thicker, and there was less than a quarter of an hour left to reach the central earthen slope.
Kim Seon-a -ah dismounted, standing in front of Gu Moran's black horse. She tore off the wide hem of her white silk outer garment, poured water from her water pouch, and offered it to Gu Moran on horseback.
"Your Highness, mercury vapor entering the lungs is incurable. You must quickly cover your mouth and nose with a damp cloth and retreat out of the mountain pass!"
I'll use my White Tiger Gang Qi to block this poisonous wind for you!
Because of the tearing of her skirt, her two straight and slender legs were revealed through the gaps in her silver-scaled soft armor. Her fair thighs were dazzlingly white against the dark, poisonous fog.
Gu Moran sat motionless on his black horse, glancing down at the wet white silk that Kim Seon-a handed him, then running his gaze down her fair arm and sweeping it over her dazzling long legs.
Instead of taking the wet silk, he bent down, put one arm around Kim Seon-a's slender waist, and with a little force, lifted the Goryeo princess off the ground and placed her horizontally on the saddle in front of him.
"Ah!" Kim Seon-a exclaimed, her back pressed tightly against Gu Moran's broad chest, her buttocks wedged against the front of the saddle, her two long legs dangling in mid-air.
Gu Moran his chin on her fragrant neck, his left hand sliding down her side and inside her torn plain clothes, his palm resting on her warm, flat stomach, and he chuckled softly.
"What are you trying to stop me from? Does that bumpkin Shōni Sukemoto think he's worthy of making me take a step back?"
Seeing that the pale white mercury fumes had already reached the bottom of the slope, and that Takaichi Nanako was locked in a wooden cage in the front row, had coughed up a mouthful of black blood, Kim Seon-a frantically reached out to grab Gu Moran's wrist:
"Your Highness, what time is it and you're still acting nonsense!"
The poisonous mercury fumes are pressing down the mountainside; we're at the bottom of the valley, and if we don't leave now, it will be too late!
"What's the panic? When has your man ever fought a battle he wasn't confident of winning?"
Gu Moran pinched the smooth outer side of her thigh, then looked up at the twelve stone holes emitting white smoke halfway up the mountain.
In his eyes, the semi-transparent system panel had already revealed the entire internal structure of the Iwami Silver Mine.
Among the intricate network of red mine tunnels, twelve exhaust branches converge in the middle layer of the mountain, all connecting to a main ventilation duct running east to west;
The air intake of that main ventilation duct is actually the hidden well in the embankment below the western mountain wall!
" Shōni Sukemoto dared to burn cinnabar and 'heartbreak grass' in the cave, why weren't his tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers suffocated by the smoke?"
Gu Moran freed his right hand and pointed with his riding whip to a crevices covered with vines at the foot of the western mountain wall.
"Because the deepest part of the mine must be connected to a main ventilation duct with one-way air intake, they are using the air drawn up from underground to expel toxins."
Besides, mercury vapor and toxic fumes look scary, but they will condense and settle when exposed to strong alkalis and high temperatures.
No sooner had he finished speaking than a fast horse charged up from the rear.
Zhen Meili was still wearing the black cloak that Gu Moran had left her last night.
Because of the rush, the ties at the collar of the cloak came undone, revealing that she was only wearing a close-fitting light yellow cross-collar short jacket underneath. Her full breasts bounced up and down with the swaying of the horse's back, and half of the edge of her snow-white bodice was visible through the neckline.
Your Highness!
I had all ten of the ship's twin-fan blowers dismantled and hauled away!
Zhen Meili reined in her horse, raised her hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead,
"The fifty bags of quicklime powder and sulfur powder you asked me to prepare last night are all in the car."
Gu Moran carried Kim Seon-a Shanya on horseback to Zhen Meili's side, reaching out to adjust her black cloak, which had slipped down to her elbows, his fingers brushing against her burning earlobes and fair neck.
Half an hour.
They took two hundred engineers and pushed all ten blowers to the hidden well opening at the bottom of the western cliff.
"Have someone cut down twenty pine trees, and block half of those twelve smoke vents halfway up the mountain from the outside. The rest are all your blowers."
Zhen Meili shrank back as he touched her neck, two blushes rising on her cheeks, but her eyes immediately lit up when she heard about the mechanism:
"Does Your Highness intend to use the main air intake at the Kan position to force the quicklime and flames in?"
But the well opening was narrow, and with ten blowers running side by side, the excessive air pressure could easily crack the wooden fan blades...
"Then assemble the air intake ducts into a funnel shape and seal them with sheet metal."
Gu Moran leaned close to Zhen Meili's ear, his warm breath brushing against her fair earlobe.
"I'll be right here watching. If you can finish this in half an hour, and turn that old codger Shōni Sukemoto into a charred corpse, then..."
When we return to camp tonight, I will personally massage your legs.
Zhen Meili's heart pounded as she recalled the scene of him holding her in his arms on the stone steps of Sea-Gazing Tower last night. She bit her lip and nodded.
"Huh? What did you spray that on?!"
She pulled on the reins, and with two hundred engineers pushing ten tall, double-fan wooden blowers, they roared towards the western mountainside.
Gu Moran first had Tuoba Mang use a long hook to pull the two flatbed carts carrying prison cages back thirty paces to prevent Takaichi Nanako and Zhou Yanru from being poisoned. Then he led the army to retreat to the high slopes on both sides to watch the show.